When a driver or passenger in an automotive vehicle is conversing with rear seat passengers or if it is desired to check on rear seat children, typically in order to establish visual contact it is necessary to turn around and at least partially face the rear seat occupants. In the case of the driver, this distracts the driver from the attention required for driving. Although some incidental eye contact can be established through the rear view mirror, typically the rearview mirror is not adjusted to align with the location of passengers in the rear seats of the vehicle, but rather along the center line of the vehicle for viewing through the rear window.
One method of viewing rear seat occupants utilized by many drivers is to manually tilt the rear view mirror down until the rear seat occupants come into view. Once the rearview mirror is tilted downward and the rear seat occupants are within view of the driver, the mirror must be readjusted in order to return the mirror to a rear window view. This is a cumbersome and time consuming process. Similar to the aforementioned procedure of physically turning around to view the rear seat, this cumbersome process distracts the driver's attention from the road.
Another method of viewing rear seated occupants is to have a second "conversation" type mirror in addition to the rear view mirror. Although this dual mirror arrangement provides rear seat, as well as rear window, viewing without distracting the drivers attention from the road, it requires additional assembly and increases product cost.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for a rear seat viewing mirror which does not increase overall product cost nor unnecessarily distract the driver's attention from the road.